Fun talk:GAIDS

I'm going to have to assume the originator:

1. Doesn't have or presently know someone close to them that has AIDS
2. Isn't gay
3. Thinks this is really funny.

To me it's mildly humorous and only if I:

1. Forget about all those friends I lost forever between 1982 and 2007
2. Remember to forget about watching a friend die from an eight-day, 105­°F fever brought on by CMV running rampant throughout his frail, wasted body.
3. Hope against hope that such as this is not the tip o' the iceberg of a subtle, anti-gay backlash that seems to be pervading the wiki.

Now, let's us make with the starving jokes!

CЯacke® 06:21, 9 November 2007 (EST)

If you find it offensive, then of course delete it. However, I would ask you to think carefully about doing it though. Censorship is a difficult thing, once you start deleting things that you find in poor taste, where does it stop? I'm sure you can find at least one person on earth who is offended by almost anything.

If it makes you feel any better, I think this article was created as a true parody of attitudes towards AIDS. I can't speak for the article's creator, but that's certainly the spirit in which I edited it. Maybe I find this amusing because I'm too young to have been really aware of the real impact of AIDS in the previous two decades. I do know at least two people with HIV, but at the moment it seems that modern medicine can give them a more or less normal life span, if rather less comfortably than the average non-infected person. Also, I don't really see any anti-gay backlash. Not sure where you're getting that from. --Jeeves 06:55, 9 November 2007 (EST)

Delete it? Hell no! I'd much rather bitch about it than stifle true creative output.

As noted above, with mine blinders on it is mildly amusing...that said, some history:

Back in about 1981, soon after St. Ronnie Reagan fired a bunch of air traffic controllers, a disease broke out in Philadelphia PA that seemed to affect members of The American Legion disproportionately. After months of investigation the CDC and others traced the disease to cooling towers of a Philadelphia hotel where most of the sufferers had stayed during a convention. The bacillus was new to science and named legionella, the popular press had dubbed the disease, (which was very virulent and had killed several members of the AL), Legionnaire's Disease.

Fast forward a couple of years...another virulent disease was making news: this one seemed to attack mainly Haitians, IV drug users and male homosexuals...the response was deafening silence. Federal dollars for research could not be found. Some folks claimed that because the sufferers of this new disease were not in the Republican base, (very unlike the Legionnaires), priorities like tax cuts were more important.

As far as the anti-gay "backlash" thing goes I'll leave you with a couple of diffs. While not overtly nasty they seem to say, "Our enemies are different than us, (we're normal), hence we are able to show our disdain for our enemies by portraying them as gay homosexuals, [which, admittedly]. they'd find distasteful. My objection to this is this: "Please do not lump these people in with me. I am gay and rightly proud that I am such and that I have been able to find the wherewithal to state it clearly and concisely (though not now it seems), for the last thirty years despite the best efforts of these people to choke off discussion of GLBT as equal citizens. Some of us are trying to lump our "enemies" in with me and mine. They ain't in my group, they're in yours, deal with them there."

Sorry for being long winded.

Here and

Here.

CЯacke® 07:44, 9 November 2007 (EST)

Are we deleting or refuting this ignorant waste of bytes?--PalMD^{-If it looks like a donut, eat it} 13:05, 10 November 2007 (EST)